


like a beast in the headlights

by orphan_account



Series: their colors don't belong (wolf verse) [1]
Category: VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, M/M, Murder, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-17
Updated: 2015-07-17
Packaged: 2018-04-09 18:57:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4360571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It'd never been easy to tame the wolf, but it'd never been hard to love Taekwoon."</p>
            </blockquote>





	like a beast in the headlights

**Author's Note:**

> originally written for my week-long leobin theme challenge, but i loved this verse so much ;; please anticipate more one-shots / continuations!

He'd been unruly lately; grown more out of control that with each full moon, a cold spiral of dread would form in the middle of Hongbin's chest until he'd felt he would burst. Whoever said taming a beast grew easier over time was dead wrong. Hongbin had the scars to prove it.  
  
He had five fingers on his left hand, but only four on his right: an accident over five years old that Taekwoon still apologized for, though Hongbin was sure Taekwoon had no conscious memory of. It'd happened when they were young: still new to each other, but desperate to make it work. A full moon, one of the firsts Hongbin had been present for. Taekwoon had been locked in the cage—a cage that had been abandoned for years but was now a memory more thought about than either of them wanted to admit—and he'd been angry; always angry when put in the cage. Snarling with foam on his elongated fangs, hair bristled alone his spine; he'd snapped, and Hongbin thought: he wouldn't hurt me, but he'd been wrong. Left with a bloody hand and two knuckles missing from his small finger, the pain had been a searing burn so blindingly hot he'd passed out immediately only to wake the following morning with a bandaged hand and a nightstand full of pills. He still woke some mornings to the feel of Taekwoon's smooth, human, face nuzzled to the palm of his right hand, kissing the remaining knuckle as if willing whatever ghost pain was still left there to stop. Hongbin would smile—something he always did when Taekwoon touched him—and bury his fingers into the unkempt, raven mess of hair Taekwoon never bothered to brush.  
  
It'd never been easy to tame the wolf, but it'd never been hard to love Taekwoon.  
  
-  
  
He called it a virus, not a curse but an affliction, like a mental illness he had no hope of curing. He knew as much about his origin as his father had, which wasn't much at all; a tainted bloodline left to kill itself out, and Taekwoon: the last living piece. He'd told Hongbin dozens of times that he'd die young; he could feel it like a sting at the back of his neck: he'd die young, and it'd all be over. And it didn't matter how badly he wanted children, he'd never have them, not if it meant the virus would pass on; not even adoption like Hongbin had so fretfully offered one night.  
  
'What are we gonna tell them?' Taekwoon asked quietly. 'They have to lock me in the basement once a month?'  
  
'They'd learn,' Hongbin said, but not very convincingly. He sounded doubtful even to himself.  
  
'I don't want them to. It's bad enough you have to do it, Bin-ah,' and he'd rolled on his side, grown despondent until sleep finally took him some hours later. Hongbin had been left awake with a sinking in his gut that was painful; but curling his body around Taekwoon's own had been a way to ease it.  
  
They lived like ordinary people: breakfast in diners and matinee picture shows. Taekwoon took Hongbin to the library twice a week, and cooked him dinner every Friday evening. They'd had a dog once too, but it ran away; had smelled the wolf and left without looking back. Hongbin didn't like to remember it: the hurt that had been so neatly displayed on Taekwoon's face like it was a child he'd lost and not just a mutt they'd found on the way home.  
  
'I'm defective,' he'd said over dinner one night. 'Animals don't even like me.'  
  
Hongbin had been nursing his coffee, once warm but now ice cold, and had looked so hard at Taekwoon his vision wavered. 'It's probably because you're an animal too, hyung. Like, you're alpha or something, so you're scary to them.' He'd smiled, but Taekwoon hadn't seen it; too busy staring at his hands like they held the answers to all his problems, but there was a crease between his brows and a frown forming at the edge of his mouth. Hongbin, with his heart in his throat, had crawled from his chair and into Taekwoon's lap; arms about his shoulders and their foreheads pressed together.  
  
'You aren't scary,' Hongbin said quietly. He kissed the furrowed part of Taekwoon's brow until it smoothed out. 'I was only playing,' and he kissed Taekwoon's mouth with heat pooling the pit of his stomach, kissed him until all the air had been pushed from his lungs; and brushing his fingers over the part of Taekwoon's hair just behind his ear, Hongbin watched his eyes roll shut; an unconscious tick Taekwoon had no control over. It was a special spot that made his body limp and boneless whenever touched; and had been one of the first things Hongbin learned about him. It was the easiest way to calm him down.  
  
-  
  
Five years together with no secrets between them. There were times Hongbin felt he knew Taekwoon better than he knew himself; and about this, he'd be right. So: on that early Thursday morning when he woke with a start from a dream already fading, he'd known—before he'd known anything else—that something happened.  
  
The sun was just rising, lazy in its arrival; a black sky turning blue that would have been beautiful had Hongbin time to acknowledge it. Taekwoon wasn't in bed, but that was normal; it was the first break of dawn that forced the wolf back into its monthly hibernation, and as early as it was, Taekwoon would only now be changing back. But there was something thick in the air like smog, ugly and suffocating, that had Hongbin crawling out of bed without putting his house slippers on (never mind the freezing floors and the cold that had settled in his bones overnight) to stand by the window with arms crossed over his chest. He found there: snow outside, and a lot of it. It covered the lawn and benches outside; trees weighed down by the powder on their branches swayed like something dead as the wind blew heavy against them. There was a stirring in his stomach like sickness, and he turned to the basement only to find the door unlocked and opened; the blackness behind it staring back at him like something sinister.  
  
'Hyung?' he called to a house too quiet to be welcoming. His response came in the form of a chair scraping across tile; and walking slowly from living room to kitchen, Hongbin found Taekwoon sat at the table with his head in his hands. The stirring in his stomach turned to nausea.  
  
Timidly, 'Hyung?' He would have walked closer had he thought his legs could carry him.  
  
It was a long time before Taekwoon said anything, and when he did: voice so gentle, Hongbin had to strain to hear him. 'I did something.'  
  
'What'd you do, hyung.'  
  
He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes, made a sound not unlike a growl. 'I did  _something_ —' and he brought his face to his knees; hung his head between his legs like a man about to faint.  
  
Hongbin left then: up the stairs and to the bedroom where he changed from his pajamas into a pair of jeans with the knees worn out and a shirt the hung past his thighs. 'Where is it?' he asked when he returned to the kitchen. 'You have to show me.'  
  
By the time they reached the shed, the sun had already risen; yellow dawn glaring white on snow that was hard beneath their feet. The body lay in a heap, half covered; and Hongbin could see bits of torn fabric spread out in the snow. By now: he felt nothing, and looking at Taekwoon he could see the feeling was mutual.  
  
'How do you know you did it?' Hongbin asked. 'You've done things before—' thinking of his finger, he said nothing about it— 'that you don't remember doing. So, how do you know that you...'  
  
Taekwoon stared at him with an expression so pained it was hard for Hongbin to look at him. Mouth pinched shut, his cheeks were pink; all the rest of him: sickly pale. 'You know I did it,' he said miserably. And standing there, with his head hung low and his shoulders squared, he looked as awful as he must have felt; and Hongbin, more aware now than ever before of the love he felt for Taekwoon, touched a hand to his own forehead, sighed quietly.  
  
'We'll bury the body.' He was deeply aware of Taekwoon glaring at him. 'We'll bury it, uh, somewhere, and they won't find it until spring. By then we'll be moved and no one—'  
  
'Just leave it.'  
  
Hongbin gaped, fresh anger flared at the back of his throat. 'You want to leave it here? With your DNA all over it?'  
  
'It won't be my DNA they find.'  
  
 _The wolf_ , Hongbin thought; and was appalled by the laugh that burst out of him. He clapped a hand over his mouth, swallowed hard. Relief too bitter to bear rushed into him; he felt light in the head like he was going to fall right there in the snow, and never be able to get up again. So he let Taekwoon carry him home, over the half mile they'd walk just to see what he'd done. And all the while his body shook, but it wasn't from the cold.  
  
-  
  
That night: with the lights out and the stereo on, Hongbin carded cold fingers through the back of Taekwoon's hair. He was sat on the couch with Taekwoon at his feet, head in Hongbin's lap; and they'd been like this for what felt like a long time.  
  
'You know what we have to do next month, right, hyung?' Lower lip bit into his mouth, he tried to ignore the way Taekwoon whined, how he buried his face into the front of Hongbin's thighs as if trying to hide. 'It's the only option we have left.'  
  
-  
  
The cage was rusted and the hinges squealed; there was a blanket spread out across the bottom in case Taekwoon would want to lie down, though it was unlikely.  
  
'It's only until morning,' Hongbin said, but already Taekwoon wouldn't look at him. 'I'll wait upstairs until you're changed. And I'll—' he looked at the cage, then looked at his hands. He held a leather collar, one that cinched tighter if Taekwoon fought against it. 'I have to do it, hyung.' But he knew that wasn't good enough.  
  
Taekwoon stared only at the ground as Hongbin fastened the collar around his neck; eyes unblinking, jaw bitten shut. He didn't respond to Hongbin's fingers lingering on his throat, or the press of his mouth to Taekwoon's own. But as Hongbin stood there, waiting, eyes like oceans so vastly deep and miserable, Taekwoon allowed him one single glance. He calmly butted his head to Hongbin's own, a warning to be left alone; and it was times like these that Hongbin was reminded that no matter how often Taekwoon separated himself from the wolf, there would always be a feral part of him.  
  
Then: up the stairs and out the back door. Hongbin stood hugging himself in a sweater that had once been Taekwoon's but now belonged to him. And as he tuned out the deep howls he heard from inside, he looked toward the sky and wondered: how long had it been since Taekwoon was able to see a full moon with eyes that were his own?


End file.
